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Summary: Blair's been a cop for one year, and must sit for his annual review. Jim's expecting the worst.Anniversary Date
by Jael Lyn
I should have listened to my dad. I should have gone into business.
Business executives don't come home smelling like a dumpster after being on duty for - how long *were* we on duty anyway?
Business executives send their Armani to the cleaners. My newly purchased flannel shirt doesn't even have all the buttons. The plaid is artistically enhanced with ragged tears in the fabric, smears of oil and a few indescribable food remains. Cleaning, dry or otherwise, is not going to save it.
Business executives don't stare into empty refrigerators. I'm sure of it. They have minions that make sure the beer is lined up, nice and neat, on the second shelf. Cold cuts and cheese, still fresh in the wrappers, live in the chiller drawers of executives. I keep staring anyway, as if the lone plastic container of really old leftovers and the open box of baking soda are going to morph into something edible.
"Jim, get out of the fridge." Blair's voice is sharp, and jerks me back to reality. "You know there's nothing edible in there. Certainly nothing you'd consider eating."
I shut the door and lean back against my ancient Coldspot. "Shit, Sandburg. The homeless down on the docks have better choices than this."
"You were the one in the dumpster," he snaps, still shuffling through several days of mail and not looking at me. "Why didn't you pick something out for us while you were at it?"
He finally looks up from the assortment of envelopes and gives me an icy, blue-eyed stare. Yeah, I know, I'm supposed to be the one with deadly glare, but every now and then, my roommate gets pushed past his limits. I'm no prize at the moment, but he looks worse. The dark circles under his eyes match a scruffy beard I'd have to work on for a week instead of a couple of days. Strands of curl have escaped the hair tie, and he has dirt smudged across his face. He looks like a thoroughly pissed off, exhausted cop, which in actuality, he is. Then the hostility just bleeds away, and he's Blair again.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean that," he says, as if an apology is necessary. "I'm just tired, man. Maybe we have some bread. I can make some peanut butter sandwiches." How typical. I bark, he automatically shifts into helper mode, and looks guilty in the bargain. Time for the senior detective to take charge.
I grab him before he gets to the cupboards, and steer him back into the nearest chair. "Not a chance, Chief. The bread is dead. Moldy. Trust me, I know." I dial the number for the market down the street and hand him the phone. "I listened when we drove by. Frank's still in the store, stocking shelves. Promise him any amount of money, but we need milk, eggs, a six-pack and something from the deli." He looks a little stunned, but the number's already ringing. I pull a fifty out of my wallet and lay it on the table in front of him. "Anything," I whisper. "Be charming." I get one of those grins that reaches into his eyes for my trouble.
I let him do what he does best and start water for some tea. Even I won't stoop to instant coffee. On the way to the chamomile, I find four stale Ritz crackers and slap some peanut butter on them. My meager offerings are ready by the time he hangs up.
"I don't believe it. He's coming. Who the hell delivers at this time of night?"
"Some things you don't need to know, Sandburg." I put a mug and the crackers in front of him. "You may get the water when it boils, but otherwise, don't move out of that chair while I shower. Then you can take a turn and soak until the food comes." He sighs, and I can sense how tired he really is. I scoop up the mail, and move it out of reach. "No thinking," I tell him, and head for the shower.
Of course, he doesn't listen. Fueled by four meager crackers, he does everything except the mail. By the time I shut the water off, clean underwear and sweats are waiting for me, and he's left a garbage bag. Good call. My clothes, including the shoes, need an indecent burial at a landfill far, far, away. I shoo him in for his own shower and settle down to wait for Frank. The moment I hear that damn elevator creak, I'll be at the door waiting. Refugees waiting for humanitarian aide have more patience than I do right now.
I can smell Blair's shampoo as he lathers up. He's a man of simple pleasures. Nothing improves his mood like getting a clean head of hair. To kill time, I finish sorting the mail. As usual, it's mostly junk, but I manage to cull out a Sport's Illustrated and an official letter from the Cascade PD, addressed to Detective Blair J. Sandburg.
Sandburg and I have a clear hierarchy for mail handling. Both of us open bills, regardless of addressee. Credit card offers, advertisements, and "Occupant" letters get tossed by whoever touches them first. All other mail is "first see, first read," except for Naomi letters. Blair always gets those, and usually ends up reading them aloud. I must say, Naomi has a real way with words.
Cascade PD is in the see-read category, so I do. Our good Detective Sandburg is being notified of his anniversary date. My brain goes into bureaucracy mode. Anniversary dates mean your formal review and evaluation with your supervisor. It's kind of nerve-wracking, and that's the downside. The upside is that you get a step raise, and some added bennies, more seniority and a milestone on the march to retirement.
Is it really possible? A year since Blair graduated from the academy and walked into the bullpen as an equal? Twelve months since the last Anthropology and Humanism journal was carefully crammed into our mail slot?
I trace the typewritten lines with my finger. If Jim Ellison can dream of a forsaken corporate future, full of clean clothes and hired help and balance sheets, does Sandburg ever think of what might have been? Are the mean streets, the stress and fatigue a fair trade for the book-lined office and the classroom? How does crawling down alleys for a living compare with studying a lost tribe in some forgotten place?
I don't want to think about that. I tuck the letter carefully under the edge of SI. Anniversary is too big a concept for me right now. I walk out to the balcony and watch for Frank to wind his way down Prospect Avenue
*****
Our food arrives. Frank is an angel, masquerading as a balding, slightly overweight, fifty-something in a blue work shirt with his name embroidered on the lapel. The bags in his arms are loaded. The aromas are intoxicating.
"Jeez, Frank, this is more than we expected! Let me get some more cash."
"No, no," he says, waving his hands. "You boys wouldn't call if you weren't desperate. We'll settle up later." Sandburg joins us, moving through a cloud of steam, still toweling off his hair. He's shaved, and the grime is gone from his face, replaced by a darkening bruise across his forehead. I wonder how he got that little souvenir without me knowing about it, and I'm not too happy about it.
Frank vanishes with a smile. After two days of bad coffee and stale candy bars, we fall on our food, feasting on two kinds of salad and killer hoagie sandwiches. Frank had to have made these up special.
There is no conversation. Now that we are clean, hungry has moved to the top of the to-do list. One look at Sandburg tells me dead tired won't be far behind. We need to eat fast before he goes to sleep with his head on the table, just like the old days when he'd fall asleep over his books.
I finish first, and go rummaging through the bags. My nose tells me that Frank has tucked chocolate in here somewhere, and I want it now.
"Haven't we eaten enough?" Blair asks, belching discretely. "What else is in there, Jim?"
"A few staples." I dig some more, ticking off what I find. "We've got juice, bagels and cream cheese for the morning." I find what I'm looking for and hold it up in triumph. "Brownies."
"The ones with the frosting?" Sandburg's eyes are suddenly alert and gleaming. He has a real love affair with the chocolate cream cheese frosting that Frank's wife, Ruthie, makes.
"Oh, sure," I tease. "My charming company isn't stimulating enough. For the frosting, you wake up. Maybe you should just go to bed and get some rest."
"Don't toy with me, Jim." The voice is stern, but the corners of his mouth are twitching.
I chop up the brownies and we consume every last crumb. Sandburg is carefully licking the last traces off his finger tips when I remember the letter. "Hey, you got the only real mail." I smooth the folded sheet in front of him, since his hands are still sticky. "You got notification of your anniversary date. Your review is scheduled for 9 AM, day after tomorrow." I'm all set to tease him about facing Simon across the desk when he goes still. Utterly still and totally silent.
Damn. I knew it. Why can't I get a clue? I make sure my partner, my best friend, is beat up, worn down, and then remind him of how much he sacrificed for the pleasure of doing it. As usual, I sit there tongue-tied, not knowing what to say to take the pain away. His eyes cloud over, staring at the words, and I want to die.
"Chief," I start to say, but he interrupts.
"A year?" he says softly. "A whole year?" There's a long silence, and I'm twisting in the wind, imagining the regrets, the despair. Finally he says, "Cool. Very cool."
I must be really tired, because my brain can't quite take that particular one-eighty from what I've been imagining. This is not what I expected. My not-so-silver tongue manages, "This is cool?"
"Oh, yeah. I didn't think I'd make it, you know? Even after I got through the academy, I was positive Simon would have to bounce me out on my ear long before this." He picks up the letter and grins. "I told myself if I could last for a year, it would count as a success, a huge success."
He snorts at the last at the last statement, as if success was out of the question. I am - appalled. No regrets, just relief. "Sandburg, how could you think that?"
"Think what?" Now he looks confused along with pensive.
I hardly know which question to answer first, and they all spill out at once. "That you wouldn't be a success? That it was a temporary thing? If you had all those doubts, why did you do it? Go through the academy and all that crap, if that's the way you felt? Why didn't you tell me?"
He looks a bit startled by the flood of questions. Okay, so maybe interrogation mode is a bit much. "And let you fret more than you were already? Jim, there wasn't one moment of the last year that you haven't monitored, hovered, watched and worried. I couldn't make it worse by heaping my own doubts onto the pile." He smiles and pats me on the arm, like this is all so simple. "You were so worried that I wouldn't like it or something, but I was worried about whether I'd be minimally competent."
"Competent?" I am totally stunned. "How can you be thinking competent? Chief, you're the best cop I've ever worked with, ever."
He gives me another smile, and shrugs dismissively. "What's important is that we made it. Maybe you can relax a little bit now." A giant yawn catches him. He stands and stretches. "This is the best, but I have so got to get some sleep. You'll lock up won't you, Jim?" He doesn't wait for an answer, and shuffles off to his room.
I gather up the groceries and move them to the kitchen, but my attention is all on the sounds of Sandburg sliding between the sheets and snuggling into his pillow. I can't help but smile when I hear him mutter through another yawn, "I am the greatest."
Door's are locked, lights are out. I stop at the French doors. He's already asleep. He was too tired to pull the comforter up, so I arrange it around his shoulders, knowing there's no way it will disturb his rest.
On my way up the stairs, I make a mental note to celebrate with some champagne and steaks when he has his review. Happy Anniversary, Chief.
&&&&&
"Jim! Jim! Wake up, man!"
Shit. I'm not really awake, but I'm up. Old instincts never really go away. Once second I'm dead to the world, the next I'm on my feet by the bed, looking down the barrel of my Glock at Sandburg's chest.
Blair throws his hands up like a bank robber in a bad movie. "Jim! Put the gun down! I surrender."
I can tell from the amount of light that it's barely dawn. Considering when we went to bed, that makes it damn near the middle of the night. Sandburg's in the same clothes he wore to bed, and his hair is sticking out all over. He's wired and looks like the hounds of hell are at his heels. I scan the loft. No other sounds, no mad attackers at the door. I pull up my piece.
"Sandburg?" I sit back down on the bed. I feel like I've been asleep for about - oh, ten minutes. "You'd better have a reason for being here."
Blair's oblivious to the fact that in my sleep-fogged alarm I just drew down on him. His voice is edged with panic. "What's Simon going to ask me?"
"What?" My foggy brain just doesn't follow this.
"You heard me," he says, like I'm some kind of a slow learner. "What's Simon going to ask me? What do I have to say?" There's a long pause, because I have no clue what he's babbling about. Even in the semi-darkness, I can see him gesturing with his hands. "At my review!" he sputters, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "What's Simon going to ask me at my review?"
He's a dead man. I swear he's a dead man.
"Jim? Come on, man, you gotta help me out here." The man is absolutely babbling. "What if Simon gives me a bad grade or something? What happens then, huh? Is there a remedial cop class I have to go to? What if..."
"Sandburg!" I shout. It's the only way to get his attention. He finally goes quiet. "Go away," I say very slowly. "I'm tired. Get back in your bed, and maybe I won't hurt you. Don't come out until the sun's over the yardarm."
"Jim, this is really important, and we don't have a yardarm," he pleads. "Maybe I can..."
"If I'm not asleep in five minutes, you won't live to have your review. The safety's off on the piece and I'm not responsible." I flop back on the bed and pull a pillow over my head.
He stands there for a second and then heads down the stairs, muttering as he goes. "...big help ...lamb to the slaughter...so-called partner watching my back..."
I know exactly what happened. He's done this before. All that IQ spun itself into a frenzy while he slept, and geysered out at the first opportunity. These uncontrollable bursts are holdovers from his grad student days, when he was double-booking dates and setting alarm clocks to stop studying. As a roommate, you just have to ride it out.
He's back in bed at least, but still talking to himself. I should probably go calm him down, but I'm just too damn tired. It's definitely time for the white noise generator and the eyeshades.
I make one last check of the clock. Twenty-seven hours until he sees Simon. I'll never survive.
&&&&&
Today is the day. I've absconded to the break room, ostensibly for coffee. In truth, I'm hiding from Sandburg. The guy's driving me nuts. His pre-review panic is hitting a crescendo.
"Hey, Jim, what's Sandburg so bent out of shape about?" Henri fills my outstretched mug right after he tops off his own. "Not his style, if you know what I mean."
"He'll be okay, H. He has his annual review with Simon today, and for some reason, he's a little freaked out by it."
"Oh, so that explains the tie," Brown says. "I guess we shouldn't tell him about the tie?"
Oh, no. Henri's train of thought has gone quite far enough. "Whatever you do, don't mention the tie, or anything else he's wearing," I say. "He's been changing outfits since six this morning." Rafe has joined us, and both of them are laughing. "I got tired just watching him. Hair down, hair back. First no tie, then a tie, then one of my ties, then back to one of his. Different shoes, different pants. I stopped him when he started to change into the suit he uses for court."
"How'd you manage that?" Rafe says, peeking down the hall.
"Loaded him into the truck and took him to breakfast. Anywhere he couldn't lay hands on a change of clothes."
"I can't see Hairboy stressing over something like this," Henri said, shaking his head. "He's done a great job. It's just a formality."
I can't stop the sigh. "He drove me nuts all day yesterday. He's convinced that Simon's going to quiz him or something. He spent the day pulling up his case files on the computer and dissecting every detail."
"I've seen Blair's paperwork," Rafe says. "I wish he'd do mine. I always leave some stupid form out. His is the Sistine Chapel of report writing. Simon could be ahead having him clean up after the rest of us."
We hear Simon's voice boom out. The moment of truth has arrived. Rafe peeks around the corner again. "Blair's looking for you, Jim."
No way. I stay right where I am, and Simon doesn't give him the option of continuing the search. The office door closes, and the three of us file back into the bullpen. The blinds are down and sort of half shut, but we can see Sandburg fidgeting already. I don't know who I feel more sorry for, Sandburg or Simon.
I'm really tempted to do a little eavesdropping, but if I've learned one thing in a year, it's that Sandburg deserves to be treated as an equal. I need to show a little faith that Simon has good things to say. I pick up a file off the top of the stack and fire up the computer, anything to distract my attention from the scene in Simon's office.
"Jim. Jim!"
It's Ronda, speaking in a whisper, trying to get my attention. She motions me over to the doorway.
"Is Blair in there with Simon? Great! Now get in here and help us!"
I guess I really haven't been paying attention, because the big conference room down the hall is bustling with people. I'm a bit miffed. Obviously, I'm out of the loop. Before I can chew on Rhonda, she shoves a bunch of balloons in my hand. "Don't just stand there. Hop to it, Jim. Make yourself useful and put those things up." I'm still working on a small protest action, and she stares at me, disgusted with my incompetence. "Blair's getting a citation, and Simon's only keeping him in there a few minutes. We found out yesterday, and got this organized. Now get busy, before Simon brings him out."
All of a sudden, I don't mind being out of the loop. My partner, the rookie, is getting a citation. More importantly, I didn't instigate this. His coworkers did. The people who know what kind of a success he really is.
Joel is coming in with a cake, and I hustle over to get the door.
"What do you think, Jim? Isn't this just great?"
I take a swipe of icing, and remember Sandburg, sitting at the table, reading his notification. He said it all, and I echo his words.
"Cool, Joel. Very cool."
THE END
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